Just a reminder - balloting will close on a THURSDAY this time.

1976 ballot

1) Joe Morgan - again the best without much argument
2) Mike Schmidt - There were several good 3B this year but Schmidt was the best
3) Mark Fidrych - Did people realize he did all that in a hitter's park?
4) Vida Blue
5) Frank Tanana - I see a big gap between these pitchers and the rest
6) Graig Nettles - good postseason helps his standing
7) Bobby Grich
8) George Brett
9) Dave Concepcion
10) George Foster
11) Pete Rose
12) Ron Cey - 4th 3B on the ballot

13-15) John Montefusco, Jim Palmer, Thurman Munson
16-21) Toby Harrah, Mark Belanger, Ken Griffey, Bert Blyleven, Garry Maddox, Tom Seaver

1976 Ballot

1. Joe Morgan, 2B, Cincinnati Reds: Head and shoulders above everyone again, 1st in OPS+, 1st in RC while playing a premium defensive position
2. Mike Schmidt, 3B, Philadelphia Phillies:</b> 150 OPS+, 121 runs created, +10 fielding
3. Vida Blue, P, Oakland Athletics: 2nd in ERA+, 3rd in Innings Pitched, #1 Pitcher for this year
4. Jim Palmer, P, Baltimore Orioles: 1st in Innings by a wide margin, 5th in ERA+
5. Pete Rose, 3B, Cincinnati Reds: Rose hasn't made my ballot often but his 123 Runs Created and a decent glove at 3B give him a boost
6. Mark Fidrych, P, Detroit Tigers: The Bird is the Word!
7. George Brett, 3B, Kansas City Royals: the top position player in the AL with a 144 OPS+ and 114 Runs Created
8. Frank Tanana, P, California Angels: a great combination of innings and rate stats
9. Randy Jones, P, San Diego Padres: 1st in Innings, top ten in ERA+ in the National League
10. Bert Blyleven, P, Minnesota/Texas: ignore the trade and the sub .500 record, the red dutchman had a 125 ERA+ in 297 Innings
11. Graig Nettles, 3B, New York Yankees: good year for third basemen as Nettles is the third to crack my ballot
12. George Foster, LF, Cincinnati Reds: good year for Cincinnati Reds as Foster is the third to crack my ballot

13. Rod Carew, 1B, Minnesota Twins: just misses out on the last ballot spot, partly due to a lack of defensive bonus after moving to first
14. Luis Tiant, P, Boston Red Sox: another good combination of innings (8th) and ERA+ (5th)
15. Mike Torrez, P, Oakland Athletics
16. Ron Cey, 3B, Los Angeles Dodgers
17. Tom Seaver, P, New York Mets
18. J. R. Richard, P, Houston Astros: 291 Innings with a 116 ERA+
19. Thurman Munson, C, New York Yankees
20. Bill Madlock, 3B, Pittsburgh Pirates

If you include Pete Rose then Cey is the 5th 3B on my ballot. George Foster is the only outfielder and there are no first basemen. It's an odd era in baseball when the bats are all infielders.

Thanks for the (accidental?) correction, DL. Nettles is the 4th third baseman on my ballot- not the 3rd as I incorrectly stated- with Cey and then Madlock the 5th and 6th in the top twenty.

I'd also agree that this is a very strong era for good-hitting infielders. Fred Lynn was the only outfielder to crack my ballot last year and Foster is the only one to make it this year. We've seen a surge of strong third basemen plus second basemen like Morgan, Grich and Carew (though Carew moved to first base this season).

I've got 4 Reds in the top 12 and 5 in the top 20. Then there's Johnny Bench. No surprise they swept the postseason.

No changes from my prelim:


1 morgan, joe 9885
2 schmidt, mike 8978
3 brett, george 7777
4 fidrych, mark 7736
5 nettles, graig 7238
6 blue, vida 7199
7 tanana, frank 7062
8 grich, bobby 6847
9 carew, rod 6781
10 rose, pete 6699
11 maddox, garry 6656
12 cey, ron 6600
13 foster, george 6366
14 palmer, jim 6167
15 cedeno, cesar 6166
16 rivers, mickey 6024
17 montefusco, john 5971
18 tiant, luis 5921
19 blyleven, bert 5881
20 seaver, tom 5709
21 belanger, mark 5692
22 jackson, reggie 5621
23 niekro, phil 5351
24 mcrae, hal 5337

Didn't notice it in your prelim but no Munson in the top 24 is a little surprising.

Hmm... I quick look at my consideration set shows I didn't include Munson. (My consideration set was only 28 players... so I'm probably missing some others who WOULD make my top 24... but shouldn't make my counting ballot unless i REALLY screwed up).
I'll try and run him to see where he'd fit...

Munson's 15th and 19th on the other ballots so far.

Okay, I got Munson's numbers and with the catcher bonus I give he gets to 20th. (Without it he misses my top two dozen).
I won't relist things (since he's off ballot)but his number is 5728.

New voters - please post a preliminary ballot by tomorrow. I'd love to have some new voters this year.

1976 Balot

War framework with reduced replacement level (WARR)

1. Mark Fidrych 8.3 WARR Outstanding performance despite below average defense and playing in a hitter's park.
2. Joe Morgan 7.7 WARR Another outstanding year for Morgan
3. Mike Schmidt 7.3 WARR
4. Graig Nettles 6.7 WARR
5. George Brett 6.35 WARR
6 Vida Blue 6.2 WARR
7. Rod Carew 6.15 WARR
8. Ron Cey 6.05 WARR
9. Frank Tanana 6.05 WARR
10. Luis Tiant 6.0 WARR
11. George Foster 5.45 WARR Foster, White and Maddox had essentially the same WARR so used hitting numbers to order them
12. Roy White 5.45 WARR

Rest of the top 20
Garry Maddox
Phil Niekro
Bert Blyleven
John MOntefusco
Pete Rose
Mark Belanger
Bobby Grich
Ron LeFlore

Wow. I'm not sure how a reduced replacement value would help a pitcher with only 250 innings. I would have thought Palmer would benefit, not Fidrych.

I have my own set of player won-lost records calculated from Retrosheet play-by-play data. Here's top 25's for pWins (which tie to team wins) and eWins (which are context-neutral). These numbers include playoff games (just counting them the same as any other game).

There's a bit more explanation on the discussion thread. Here's my top 12 (numbers following the names are pWins - pLosses, pWOPA, pWORL); some of these are rearranged slightly from the discussion thread.

1. Joe Morgan, 24.0 - 13.8, 5.4, 7.1 - Easy #1 for at least the third time this decade.
2. Mike Schmidt, 23.5 - 16.2, 3.3, 5.1 - Solid, but distant, 2nd to Morgan.
3. George Brett, 23.2 - 17.5, 2.9, 4.8 - Would be my AL MVP.
4. Jim Palmer, 19.6 - 13.5, 3.2, 4.7 - Best pitcher in MLB by my stats.
5. Vida Blue, 17.9 - 12.6, 2.8, 4.1
6. Mark Fidrych, 16.0 - 10.6, 2.8, 4.0 - Fidrych and Blue are pretty close across-the-board, but I think Blue's clearly (albeit slightly) better.
7. George Foster, 23.1 - 16.7, 2.5, 4.3 - Best player at a "hitting" position (1B/OF/DH); ranks a bit higher in context-neutral (eWins) than pWins.
8. Bobby Grich, 20.2 - 15.7, 2.8, 4.4 - Best 2B in the AL.
9. Ron Cey, 21.5 - 15.2, 2.9, 4.6 - For some reason, 1976 was an extremely good year for 3B.
10. Thurman Munson, 20.2 - 16.5, 2.3, 4.0 - Best C in the majors; his 20 pWins (including postseason) is an extremely impressive total for a catcher.
11. Toby Harrah, 20.2 - 19.7, 1.1, 2.9 - Best SS in the majors.
12. Steve Carlton, 17.9 - 13.5, 2.9, 4.3 - He ranks 4th in MLB in pWOPA, but only 10th in pWORL and outside the top 25 in eWOPA and eWORL (1.5/2.8). His pWOPA is something of a contextual illusion (he benefitted from very strong run support), but his pitching led to real wins, and no other candidates jump out at me, so I'm going to go ahead and put him here at the bottom of my ballot.

My 1976 MMP ballot:

1. Joe Morgan -- one of the best seasons ever
2. Mike Schmidt -- big gap between one and two
3. George Brett -- a little more defense would put him above Schmidt
4. Mark Fidrych -- great and loony season
5. Graig Nettles -- stellar defense gets him this high
6. Pete Rose -- solid season (2nd season at 3b)
7. Rod Carew -- very good offensive season
8. Vida Blue -- very good 5.8 win value
9. Garry Maddox -- great defensive season and hit 330
10. Ron Cey -- good season and good defense too
11. Bobby Grich -- best AL 2b by far
12. Frank Tanana -- this is when he threw really hard

This is Brock Hanke's ballot for 1976. As per usual, I started out by sorting the headers by Win Shares and by WAR, and then tried to get a consensus. And again, this was impossible, because WAR ranks top pitchers higher than Win Shares does. I then look for players who dominated their positions and for postseason credit, and then try to think if I have anything that would add or subtract from anyone's ranking. So, with that in mind, here goes:

1. Joe Morgan (I don't have to explain this one, do I?)
2. Mike Schmidt (Or this one?)
3. George Brett (At this point, we have already started passing by the top WAR pitchers)
4. Pete Rose (Ranks highly in both systems)
5. Graig Nettles (Ranks, according to my methods, even with Rose)
6. Mark Fidrych (Ranked 2nd by WAR, 11th by Win Shares, 1st by Entertainment Tonight)
7. Rod Carew (Dominated First Basemen)
8. Jim Palmer (Ranks well in both systems)
9. Frank Tanana (Again, there is some semblance of a consensus between WS and WAR)
10. Bobby Grich (4th in WS, tied for 20th in WAR)
11. Cesar Cedeno (Another Win Shares favorite)
12. Vida Blue (WAR has him 5th, WS has him 21st. The other contender was Ron Cey, 7th in WS, 18th in WAR. You try making a consensus out of that.)

I should clarify what I mean by reduced replacement level. What happens is that I set the replacement baseline higher so that there are about 60% of the number of replacement wins that there are with the normal baseline. So it is not the level that is reduced, but the number of replacement wins. I had explained in an earlier thread, but for the sake of brevity, I think I have caused some misunderstanding in my results.

Thanks for the explanation, makes more sense now.

Voted previous elections, have not voted yet

sunnyday
SoCalDemon
eric
OCF
Yardape
fra paolo
John Murphy

balloting ends tomorrow, not today

Mr. C - I assumed, based on comment #13, that you had dropped the replacement level, which is the zero point at which you start counting contributions as positive numbers and really lousy play as negative. But comment #18 here suggests that you raised the replacement level, not lowered it, and still got a reduction of 40% in "replacement wins." Either you don't mean, by "replacement wins", what I thought you did, or you meant "lowered" instead of "raised", or I don't understand "reduced replacement level" at all. The last of these is the most likely. Your ballot is certainly defensible; that it doesn't always agree with mine isn't any big deal. The oddest thing in it, to me, is how you got a large separation between Nettles and Rose. But no, as of right now, I don't know what you mean by "reduced replacement level." Sorry. I would be interested, if you want to take another stab at it. - Brock

bjhanke - I think he's setting his replacement value somewhere between replacement and average. This leads to fewer "wins" above that baseline.

I thought I would get this in early this time. Not so much.

1. Joe Morgan - clearly the best this year, IMO
2. Thurman Munson
3. Mike Schmidt - Schmidt and Munson are really, really close, so I put the catcher first
4. Pete Rose - falls in between the top three and the larger clumping below him.
5. George Brett - Great ALCS
6. Vida Blue - my pitcher of the year
7. Davey Concepcion - The MMP project is making me think hard about DanR's view of '70s shortstops
8. Bert Blyleven
9. Bill Russell
10. Frank Tanana
11. Tom Seaver
12. Ted Simmons
13. Cesar Cedeno
14. Mickey Rivers

As I said in the discussion thread, I do put weight on FIP statistics for pitchers, which is why Fidrych is off ballot.

Yardape - you still have Bill Russell. You indicated in the discussion thread that it should be Graig Nettles.

DL (#21) - That would make very good sense, and it would mean that I misunderstood the term "replacement wins." I thought it meant the number of wins you'd have to get to reach replacement level. If it actually means Wins Above Replacement (WAR) ... well, you can see how I'd get mixed up about the terminology. I started with the assumption that "replacement wins" meant something other than WAR, because I assumed that Mr. C would use "WAR" or "wins above replacement" if that was what he meant. It's no big deal, but before I started thinking that I understood what he was doing, I figured that I better get the terminology right.

Also, I think Bill Russell was retired before 1976, but if not, his ranking is way too low He was, after all, the greatest basketball player of all time. Oh, you mean the Dodger shortstop. - Brock

1976 MMP Ballot (No postseason credit):

The year of the third basemen!

1) Joe Morgan - Best ML player - comfortably ahead of #2.
2) Mike Schmidt - Best ML third baseman.
3) George Brett - Best AL player.
4) Bobby Grich - Best AL second baseman.
5) Pete Rose - Best third baseman in the NL West.
6) Cesar Cedeno - Best ML center fielder.
7) Garry Maddox - Best center fielder in the NL East.
8) Rod Carew - Best ML first baseman.
9) Bob Watson - Best NL first baseman.
10) Mark Fidrych - Best ML pitcher.
11) Graig Nettles - Best third baseman in the AL East.
12) Ron Cey - Best third baseman on the Dodgers :-).

Brock

DL explained my procedure pretty well, but I will work through an example which will hopefully clarify my poor use of terminology.

Using Mark Fidrych:

a definition: WAR = WAA + Replacement wins ( the wins created between the average and replacement baselines)

Using RA and adjustments for team fielding and park, his wins above average is 6.82 WAA.

I realize there is no accepted "normal" for the replacement baseline, but using the Baseball Reference baseline Fidrych creates 2.44 replacement wins by my method,, for a total of 6.82 + 2.44 = 9.26 WAR.

For me WAR, is a good way to value all the players in the league, but when restricting the players evaluated to only the top players, I found that it tended to value extreme playing time too much. I thought about just using WAA, but that tended to allow players with what I considered too little playing time to be valued to high.

With some experimenting, I decided to set the baseline so that the replacement value was 60% of "normal".

For Fidrych, the adjusted replacement value would then be 2.44 x .6 = 1.46, so his adjusted WAR would be 6.82 + 1.46 = 8.28 WARR.

Hard to keep 3bs and AL pitchers off this ballot.

Of the one-big-number systems, my preference is Win Shares Above Bench, because I prefer Fielding Win Shares to other commonly available systems and 'Above Bench' adjusts the Win Shares replacement level to something more realistic than raw Win Shares. I also take a look at WPA/LI, because it captures the actual contributions to winning games. However, I look at context a lot, as well.

1) Joe Morgan Clearly the best hitter in his league, and a key part of the Big Red Machine's second consecutive championship.
2) Mark Fidrych
3) Frank Tanana
4) Mike Schmidt I have these three players very close in total Merit, and what I've gone with is my estimate of their respective value to their teams. Fidrych's Tigers only won 74 games, and Fidrych is way ahead of anyone else on the team in terms of contributions. Tanana's Angels only won 76 games, and Tanana dominates his team even moreso, but he's working in a pitcher's park. Schmidt is the best hitter on a team that ran away with a divisional championship.

These four were solidly ahead of everyone else. The next block was easier to rank amongst theselves.

5) Vida Blue Blue went 3-2 against Kansas City. The Athletics finished 2 1/2 games behind the Royals. But he beat them in his last two starts. He also went 8-2 in his last ten starts. Blue was an important part of the Athletics' attempt to chase down the Royals. He also was but 0.01 behind the League ERA leader, Fidrych.
6) Bob Watson He had a really good season with the bat for a hitter playing his home games in a ballpark with an 86 BPF (single-season).
7) George Brett Drops a bit because his WPA/LI isn't great. Originally I had DH Hal McRae ahead of him, but Brett contributes with his glove as well as his bat, and McRae's offensive outage in late September seems to have been a key component of the Royals' swoon. I'll note this here: from 8 May to 11 June, the Royals took charge of the AL West. During that time, McRae hit 428/481/580. Crikey!
8) Jim Palmer He's got 315 excellent innings, but for is overshadowed in one way or another by those ahead of him.
9) Bobby Grich The best 2b in the AL, now that Rod Carew has moved to 1b, Grich put up some fine batting numbers in a pitcher's park.
10) <b>Reggie Jackson>/b> Reggie! goes to Baltimore and puts up the best hitting season for a rightfielder in the majors in 1976

Of the one-big-number systems, my preference is Win Shares Above Bench, because I prefer Fielding Win Shares to other commonly available systems and 'Above Bench' adjusts the Win Shares replacement level to something more realistic than raw Win Shares. I also take a look at WPA/LI, because it captures the actual contributions to winning games. However, I look at context a lot, as well.

1) Joe Morgan Clearly the best hitter in his league, and a key part of the Big Red Machine's second consecutive championship.
2) Mark Fidrych
3) Frank Tanana
4) Mike Schmidt I have these three players very close in total Merit, and what I've gone with is my estimate of their respective value to their teams. Fidrych's Tigers only won 74 games, and Fidrych is way ahead of anyone else on the team in terms of contributions. Tanana's Angels only won 76 games, and Tanana dominates his team even moreso, but he's working in a pitcher's park. Schmidt is the best hitter on a team that ran away with a divisional championship.

These four were solidly ahead of everyone else. The next block was easier to rank amongst theselves.

5) Vida Blue Blue went 3-2 against Kansas City. The Athletics finished 2 1/2 games behind the Royals. But he beat them in his last two starts. He also went 8-2 in his last ten starts. Blue was an important part of the Athletics' attempt to chase down the Royals. He also was but 0.01 behind the League ERA leader, Fidrych.
6) Bob Watson He had a really good season with the bat for a hitter playing his home games in a ballpark with an 86 BPF (single-season).
7) George Brett Drops a bit because his WPA/LI isn't great. Originally I had DH Hal McRae ahead of him, but Brett contributes with his glove as well as his bat, and McRae's offensive outage in late September seems to have been a key component of the Royals' swoon. I'll note this here: from 8 May to 11 June, the Royals took charge of the AL West. During that time, McRae hit 428/481/580. Crikey!
8) Jim Palmer He's got 315 excellent innings, but for is overshadowed in one way or another by those ahead of him.

The top eight are fairly clear. I can make a good case for at least seven players for the remaining four slots.

9) Bobby Grich The best 2b in the AL, now that Rod Carew has moved to 1b, Grich put up some fine batting numbers in a pitcher's park.
10) Cesar Cedeno Another good hitting season, best in the majors for a CF (by a very long way), masked by the Astrodome.
11) Reggie Jackson Reggie! goes to Baltimore and puts up the best hitting season for a RF in the majors in 1976.
12) Rod Carew He beats out Pete Rose and Ron Cey by virtue of a big advantage in Batting Win Shares Above Bench (18 vs Rose's 13.7 and Cey's 12.7).

Obviously, ignore the first ballot! Don't know what happened there.

No votes yet from:

sunnyday (unusual)
SoCalDemon
eric
OCF

I'm not closing the election until I hear back from Yardape. I don't want a cut-and-paste error counting if I can avoid it.

Would it be possible to get an extension to midnight PCT? Been a busy week.

I'm not going to be awake then so it would be an extension until tomorrow. I'm fine with that but want to know how the other ballot counters feel about it.

I'm not going to be awake then so it would be an extension until tomorrow. I'm fine with that but want to know how the other ballot counters feel about it.

I'm okay with it.

I'm fine with that but want to know how the other ballot counters feel about it.

I have no objection to an extra day.

Okay, one more day. 4:00 Eastern tomorrow. Hopefully I get a clarification from Yardape and a ballot from sunnyday

Yardape - you still have Bill Russell. You indicated in the discussion thread that it should be Graig Nettles.

Gah! I had a post where I corrected it, then lost it, and I guess I forgot to correct when I did it again. Sorry about that. My correct ballot:

1. Joe Morgan - clearly the best this year, IMO
2. Thurman Munson
3. Mike Schmidt - Schmidt and Munson are really, really close, so I put the catcher first
4. Pete Rose - falls in between the top three and the larger clumping below him.
5. George Brett - Great ALCS
6. Vida Blue - my pitcher of the year
7. Davey Concepcion - The MMP project is making me think hard about DanR's view of '70s shortstops
8. Bert Blyleven
9. Graig Nettles
10. Frank Tanana
11. Tom Seaver
12. Ted Simmons
13. Cesar Cedeno
14. Mickey Rivers

I guess I can slap together a ballot. This is mostly based on my old RC in context computations, gleaned from preparation for HOM ballots long ago. Sort of a before-there-was-WAR approach. It was a very good year for 3B, and not a good year at all for LF/RF/1B/DH candidates.

1. Joe Morgan (not a close call)
2. Mike Schmidt
3. George Brett
4. Cesar Cedeno
5. Pete Rose
6. Mark Fidrych (the best pitcher of the year, but just barely)
7. Vida Blue
8. Rod Carew (it was also a good year for 2B)
9. Frank Tanana
10. Bobby Grich
11. Toby Harrah (played short and third, and really hit quite well)
12. Thurman Munson
------
Ron Cey
Bert Blyleven
Tom Seaver
Graig Nettles
Gene Tenace
Randy Jones
Hal McRae

1976, ah, the bicentennial year. It was a great year, a great party year. Not much of a year for tunes, however.

1. Joe Morgan--#1 in both WAR and WS and OPS+
2. Mike Schmidt
3. George Brett
4. Mark Fidrych--I saw him pitch at Tiger Stadium, very exciting
5. Pete Rose
6. Rod Carew
7. Thurman Munson--seemed like a good MVP choice at the time
8. Bill Madlock
9. Graig Nettles
10. Mickey Rivers
11. Hal McRae
12. Gary Maddox
13. Vida Blue
14. Ron Cey
15. Reggie Jackson

1976, ah, the bicentennial year. It was a great year, a great party year.

I'm sure I enjoyed it but I don't remember. I was 2 at the time.

I gave SoCalDemon another day, I'll give him 15 more minutes but then we're closing up.

Election is closed. Please review my proposal in the discussion thread.